


to become the rose-tree

by devicing



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: AU - Gothic Fairy Tale, AU - Halloween Costumes, Alternate Universe, M/M, Supernatural Elements, tw blood, vaguely Grimm's Fairy Tales, vaguely Hadestown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22310038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devicing/pseuds/devicing
Summary: What wakes the Wolf that night is not the usual cobblestones rattling the iron bars of the cage that surrounds him, but a question asked on the lofty back of a nearly-moonless night.“Say, Wolfman?” the voice asks him with an airiness as ethereal as the hazy half-dream he’d just been woken from, “I’ve got a question for you—what is the true story of your kind?”Theirs was always meant to be a sad tale. Still, he howls against it with all that he is.[Gothic fairy tale-esque AU take on theGraffart Halloween Costumes]
Relationships: Momota Kaito/Ouma Kokichi
Comments: 20
Kudos: 76





	to become the rose-tree

**Author's Note:**

> So back in Oct. '18 I woke up in the middle of the night to jot down a few lines that came to me as I was drifting off, and now nearly 15 months later and against all odds, I am here to finish that thought.
> 
> Is it the right season for this fic anymore? Definitely not! But it sure can be if you choose to exist in a constant state of Halloween energy like I do.

_And Lina said to Fundevogel: 'Never leave me, and I will never leave you.'_

_Fundevogel said: 'Neither now, nor ever.'_

_Then said Lina: 'Do you become a rose-tree, and I the rose upon it.’_

— ❖ 1  ❖ —

What wakes the Wolf that night is not the usual cobblestones, rattling the iron bars of the cage that surrounds him, but a question asked on the lofty back of a nearly-moonless night. 

“Say, Wolfman?” the voice asks him with an airiness as ethereal as the hazy half-dream he’d just been woken from, “I’ve got a question for you—what is the true story of your kind?”

The carriage creaks back and forth as the caravan continues its long, ambling journey. Somewhere off in the distance, an owl questions the night. When he cracks one eye open, the crates and barrels stocked for the show catch the pale light in grayscale, but besides them, nothing. The Wolfman waits a moment longer, but the carriage continues its journey in silence. 

A figment of a dream, perhaps, as familiar as it was. Sleep beckons him in once more, drawing heavy eyelids downwards and coaxing his cheek back to the hunched line of his shoulder. The position isn’t a comfortable one, but comfort is a luxury he hasn’t had for what feels like ages. Sleep is one of the few he still gets to keep. He takes it greedily.

Or he would, at least.

“Wolfman,” comes the voice again, more insistent this time, from somewhere within the cover of the shadows. “I believe I asked you a question.”

“Let me sleep,” he grumbles, shuffling deeper into the poor makeshift pillow of his arms. 

A disappointed sigh whispers across the arching carriage roof. “No no, that won’t do. If I can’t sleep tonight, then I’ve decided neither will you.”

The Wolfman huffs crossly and screws his eyes tighter in protest.

Still, the voice continues. “You see, the question occurred to me earlier and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. I’ve heard all the stories, of course,” it says so casually, “but none of them seem quite right. I’d rather hear the answer straight from the horse’s mouth. Or the wolf’s mouth, as it were in this case.”

“Well I ain’t got one for you.”

“Surely you must know _something_. Wisdom of the pack, or so I hear.”

The wound smarts as though it were still fresh. A snarl pulls at the Wolfman’s lip, which he buries into the curve of his shoulder on instinct. “Well sorry to disappoint, but I ain’t got one of those either.”

“Hm,” the voice says, softer this time. “Disappointing indeed.”

Silence sweeps over the bed of the carriage once more. The wheels creak along to a steady, haunting rhythm. The caravan continues ever onwards towards its destination.

“I have a proposition for you, Wolfman,” comes the shadowy voice once more. “Word is we’ll reach the capital in a little over three weeks’ time. You know what will happen to you then, I assume.”

He does. 

“You’re quite the curiosity, Wolfman, and I think I’d like to know more about you. So here’s my offer: I’ll tell you a story for each rumor I’ve heard about your kind, and you’ll tell me if it’s true or not. If I like what I hear, I may just be inspired to help you out.”

Ears prick forward. Hope blossoms shamefully at the Wolfman’s core. He swallows. “I told you, I don’t have any stories to tell you.”

A whipcrack laugh lashes against the metal bars. “What curious wording you’ve chosen. Is it that you truly don’t have any stories to tell, or just none to tell to _me?_ ”

The Wolfman’s silence doesn’t help. The smile laced into the voice’s next words says as much.

“Indulge me, then, I don’t care. What matters is the fun of the story, not the truth of it. Just keep me interested as I spin them. Maybe I’ll even tell you one of my own.”

“Like I’d want to hear any of those,” he grumbles. 

“So you say now,” the voice says, sure enough in itself to make his hackles rise. “We start tomorrow night. Sleep tight, Wolfman.”

It’s only once he wakes the next day that the Wolfman places the voice beyond the veil of the night. As the curtains pull back and the town’s masses gather around to take in the horrors, the Pierrot spins his terrible tales for their hungry ears. The voice is muffled behind the mask he dons—half Sock, half Buskin—but it’s familiar all the same.

Even as the crowds hiss and jeer at him from dawn til dusk, the Wolfman’s eyes never leave the ringleader’s careless, twirling form. 

And even though his gaze bores into it like angry daggers, the mask refuses to crack. 

❖

“You lied to me,” he snarls at the first sound of movement across the top of his cage later that evening.

“A lie?” the Pierrot feigns innocence. “When did I ever say anything of the sort?”

“You didn’t tell me you were the ringleader of this whole damned freak-show,” he snaps up at the metal plate above him. 

“Well an omission and a lie aren’t necessarily one and the same,” the Pierrot responds, blasé. 

The Wolfman feels a rumbling growl build in his chest. He doesn’t hold it back this time, letting it reverberate through the carriage like a drumroll

The Pierrot continues. “Besides, if we’re talking about lies, then you’re just as much a liar as I am.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Be careful with your accusations. Just because I play the _part_ of the ringleader doesn’t mean that I _am_ him.” The Pierrot tuts his tongue like a mother scolding her insolent child. “Roles are roles, Wolfman. I can wear them as easily as you wear that cursed pelt of yours.”

The Wolfman frowns. “Cursed…?”

“And what an _excellent_ segue that is into my story for the evening!” He hears excited shuffling across the top of the cage. “I couldn’t have planned a better transition myself. Tell me—are you excited to hear my tale?”

Pinpricks of pain lance the Wolfman’s arms. Belatedly willing his claws back, he snarls, “I don’t want your damn stories, or your damn help for that matter. I just want to sleep.”

The Pierrot only laughs. “Well I may not be the true ringleader, but I can certainly abuse the role when push comes to shove. By which I mean you have no way to stop me, Wolfman, even if you wanted to. Helpless in your cage as you are, and all.”

The Wolfman is up before he can even really register it. The metal bars rattle under the force of his blow, but the stubborn iron roof of the cage refuses to budge. It still refuses even after the second hit, and the third. Even his snarling roar—half-man, half-beast—does nothing against the old, rusted metal. 

The cold sinks through the skin of his knuckles, creeps right into his bones. He leaves them there as he catches his breath, feeling useless as ever.

“Oh, how frightening,” says the Pierrot, though he sounds anything but. “What a terror, the rage of the _Úlfhéðnar._ ”

The anger seeps out of him in sluggish waves, and a traitorous curiosity slinks in to fill in the gaps. “The what?”

“ _Berserkers,_ Wolfman, _”_ replies the Pierrot, his voice laced with dangerous delight. “My story for you this night. Care to hear the tale?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. 

_The Úlfhéðnar_

_The tale is one of Óðinn and his wolf-skins—men who wore no armor save for the pelts of wolves slain by their own hands. Fighters who became as blood-crazed as the rabid, wild hounds whose skins they stole, wielding the strength of an entire pack in their bare hands alone. Warriors who cut their teeth on their shields and battle both. Beasts, mindless in their battle-lust and their all-encompassing rage. The fearsome might of the berserkr._

“You had that fight in you, once, Wolfman,” the Pierrot says suddenly, breaking the spell of his finely crafted tale in a guileful tone. “I remember it. It’s still there, somewhere, but you don’t tap into it like you used to. Back when you first got here. What happened to it?”

Teeth sharpen in the faint moon-glow as the Wolfman’s lip pulls back in a snarl. “Come down here and find out.”

The Pierrot’s laugh is a melody out of tune. “Ah, there it is! But only just a little spark of a once roaring flame. Come now, surely you can do better than that!”

A few weeks earlier, the goading would have worked. But he knows his prison all too well now. And while some of that pride is gone now, he still has enough to say, “I’m not going to rise to your bait that easily.”

He hears a haughty snort. “I’d say you already did.” 

The Wolfman throws one last punch to the iron roof of the cage, relishing the startled yelp it gets him, then moves down to his usual spot. “Alright, you’ve had your fun. Now leave me alone.”

The pout in the Pierrot’s voice is palpable as he replies, “Not until you give me your answer. The tale of the _Úlfhéðnar_ —was any of it real or not?”

“Not.”

“Aw, not even a little?”

“None of it.”

“And you’re absolutely sure?”

“If I could choose not to be here,” the Wolfman snaps. “If I could just take this all off like clothes and look just as human as the rest of you, do you _really_ think I’d still be here right now?”

“Yes,” comes the reply, and the surety of it cuts through the night air like a knife. 

It’s enough to make the Wolfman falter. “What?”

“Yes, I do think you would still be here. Even with the choice.”

“Well,” the Wolfman says, but stops. Swallows. Continues, lower. “Well… what the hell do you know?”

“I know that just because a person has the chance to shed a guise does not necessarily mean they will.” The Pierrot breathes in slowly, lets the breath out even slower. “Here’s a thought experiment for you: tell me, where does the wolf end and the man begin for you?”

There’s a chill in the air that wasn’t there before. The Wolfman huddles further into his knocked knees and the familiar embrace of the iron bars. “I’m not answering shit for you,” he growls lowly. It stings of cowardice, but he is _tired_.

If the Pierrot heard the half-hearted threat in his rumbling tones, he doesn’t act like it. “All I mean,” his low voice murmurs, “is that there is pride for us in the roles we play, Wolfman, as well as the one’s we’re inexplicably dealt. Pride and comfort.”

“Are you calling me a coward?”

“Worse.” A short, dry laugh clips the carriage roof. “Oh, far worse than that. I’m calling you _sentimental_.” 

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

The Pierrot hums thoughtfully. “The identities we take are just as much a part of us as any limb. To willingly let go of them would be a heavy price to pay.”

The Wolfman ponders this, as much as it rankles his pride. “What about you and your roles then?” is his eventual counter. 

To his surprise, the Pierrot doesn’t answer right away. “What about them?”

“The ringmaster. You talked a big game about that being just a part you play. You seem fine enough for having stepped out of it.”

The carriage rocks back and forth to a foreboding rhythm. Above him, the Wolfman hears the Pierrot shuffle. To his honed hearing, the delicate sound of a latch-snap sounds heavy in the air. He’s heard sounds like it before—pill boxes and lockets and all sorts of other precious knick-knacks. He wonders if he’s ever seen the Pierrot pocket anything of the sort. He makes a note to look for it later, in the daylight.

“That’s assuming I’ve left my role at all,” the Pierrot murmurs a moment later.

“Well if that’s the case,” the Wolfman growls, baring his teeth in a dangerous, bitter grin, “then how’s about you come down here and _let me out,_ Ringmaster _?_ ”

The silence stretches too long. He pricks his ears towards the sound, any sound, but he can barely hear the whisper of the Pierrot’s breathing. The shadows move in silence, and he almost wonders if maybe they’d somehow swallowed his irksome guest up into their depths for him.

But then, “I think,” says a voice directly at his ear, as sultry smooth as the velvet night, “that can wait until you complete your end of the bargain.”

The Wolfman whips around to the sound as a violent shiver crawls down his spine and startled claws scrape across his exposed forearms.

The painted guises of Melpomene and Thalia wink back at him, inverted. The Pierrot’s porcelain mask is haunting in its utter blankness. Without the sheen of daylight, the muses’ eyes are far too hollow, far too empty as they gaze into him. 

“Still wearing the mask?” the Wolfman asks. He tries to hide the shaky timbre of his voice in the low roll of his growl. “Now who’s the coward?”

The Pierrot laughs, and only now does the Wolfman place the muffled echo he’d heard before as the laughter nestles itself into the porcelain’s delicate curves and hollows. “You never answered my question,” the Pierrot says. “Where does your wolf end and your man begin?”

Wrapping his fingers across the iron bars, the Wolfman leans in as far as he can. The Pierrot smells of a strange mix of spice—clove and aniseed, something tells him—and the combination makes his senses quiver. He asks, “I don’t know, where does the Fool end for you?” 

“Hm… who can say?” the Pierrot purrs. “Goodnight, Wolfman. And look forward to my next story, won’t you?”

The shadows don’t swallow him up—he leaves by the carriage door—but something of his presence still lingers in the dark hollows of the room long after he leaves. 

The Wolfman sleeps, but for the first time in all his years, he itches in his skin. 

— ❖ 2  ❖ —

A few days later, as he spies a new town breaking on the horizon through the cramped porthole window of the carriage, the Wolfman decides to turn the tables on the usual game. Instead of being the one watched, he resolves to do the watching himself this time. 

Today’s small, isolated hamlet sits at the edge of a rolling sea of grain made golden against the gray, overcast sky. Foreboding weather of this kind always invites a crowd, and what better a source for a crowd than a town so dour, so destitute, and so obviously hungry for entertainment? As the caravan pulls in and the workers begin to set the stage, the people creep out from their hovels and flock to the show like hyenas to a carcass—starved just enough to outweigh their fear of the predators that might lurk within the shadows. 

When the meek stagehand with her round, terrified eyes and even rounder glasses comes with his usual meal, smelling of moonflowers meant to poison him and draw the beast out for their hungry audience’s entertainment, for once, he doesn’t shove it away to spill the contents across the cage floor. This time he drinks deep and feels the wolf within him howl. He sings with a raw, vindictive energy. When the poor girl scurries off, it feels something like a victory even in its usual defeat. 

Then he waits, watching through holes in the tattered canvas cover of his cage and biding his time until the crowd’s ravenous eyes are coaxed his way.

When the Pierrot steps out to greet the townsfolk, their reaction is instantaneous, just as it’s been in every stop they’ve made before and every one they’ll make after. He traipses into the center of the villagers’ huddled circle with all the confidence offered to a man who can hide behind a mask. Like a twisted phonograph, he carefully places his fingers to the pulse of the crowd, quivers with the dread and trepidation humming through their wheat stalks, and spins those fears into terrible, haunting words. 

The Pierrot is masterful in his ruthless cunning, and the townspeople eat it up even as it terrifies them so. 

By the time the young man twirls his way to his cage, the Wolfman is already lying in wait, sat cross-legged and ready in the middle of his cramped prison. Today, he refuses to cower in his corner like every other day. Today, he will give them a show, play into their fears. Today, _he_ will be the one who watches.

When the canvas is pulled back, voices among the crowd scream in fright, but—emboldened by the acts before—the village folk still manage to loose a fusillade of violent slurs, angry insults. He’s heard it all before, and he’ll hear it no matter where he goes. He tries not to pay it any mind. After all, he is the watcher. He can bury the stinging pain within him, just for today. 

And canvas still in hand, the Pierrot, for the briefest of moments, falters at the sight of him. If only for a short spell, the needle skips, a scratch in his terrible melody. Perhaps it’s the Wolfman’s canine veil showing through, more fearsome and daring than usual, or perhaps it’s simply the Wolfman’s silent resistance—his sudden rebellion in his refusal to recoil from the insults hurled his way—that causes the young man to falter.

The Pierrot’s mask refuses to move, but something behind it stirs all the same. 

And like the crowd, gifted courage by their fear, the Wolfman flashes him the most dangerous grin he can manage. As the crowd riots behind him, the Pierrot simply folds his hands into his pockets and raises his chin before his haunting tune begins anew. 

The Wolfman watches. He watches the Pierrot as he leads the villagers like a Pied Piper from one outcast oddity to the next. He continues to watch as the show reaches its finale and the Pierrot bows low, hat flourished outward for coin that the villagers—caught up in his spell as they are—are suddenly all too eager to part with. He watches as they return to the monotony of their lives, and the Pierrot’s phonograph record slows to a stop. 

And because he was watching so very carefully and ever so patiently, he manages to catch something on this day that he has never seen before. Inside him, the wolf howls vindictively.

“So the spark hadn’t gone out completely, it seems,” the Pierrot says as he melts in through the shadows of his carriage later that evening. “What a relief. I was beginning to fear I’d grow tired of you.”

“Glad I didn’t disappoint,” the Wolfman replies dryly. 

“As am I, Wolfman!” comes his crooning response. “And I can tell that you’re just _dying_ to hear my next tale.”

“Right, sure,” he replies offhandedly. “But first—come on, are you really going to hide up there all night?”

A laugh from above the cage. “After that sudden show of bravado you put on today? I would be a fool not to.”

“And here I thought you already were one.” 

“Oho, touché,” comes the Pierrot’s reply, and the Wolfman can’t help but give in to a snarling, conspiratorial grin. Something in him sings with the wild energy of holding the potential upper hand. He itches to let his secret loose.

The Pierrot must sense that something in him, because his next words are, “Wolfman… I’m almost afraid to ask, but what has _actually_ gotten into you today? Did my story the other night really have such an effect on you?” He pauses, something low and wary creeping into his tone. “Somehow, I doubt it.”

The singing energy in the Wolfman howls for escape, so he gives it voice. “You got me,” he admits. Then, hissed through bared teeth, “I figured it out. I know what you _really_ are, Fool.”

He expects shock. He expects the thrill of turning the tables, of wrenching the rug out from beneath the Pierrot so that he spills to the ground at the Wolfman’s feet.

He doesn’t expect the Pierrot to let loose a buoyant laugh. 

“Oh, do you, now?” he croons. “And what will you do with that truth, Wolfman? Is that rebellion coursing through your veins? You truly _are_ the offspring of Lycaon.”

And just like he had upset the Pierrot’s carefully syncopated rhythm earlier that day, so too does the Pierrot cause his own to fall into disharmony. 

“Wh…?” He trails off. The carriage goes silent before the Wolfman sourly guesses, “Lycaon. Another one of your stories, I suppose?”

“Got it in one,” the Pierrot simpers in response. “Now before you try and spill all of my nasty secrets, would you allow me to say my part first? Pretty please?”

He doesn’t reply, and so the Pierrot takes his cue. 

_Lycaon of Arcadia_

_Lycaon’s story has many fragmented tellings, but each is one of hubris, and one of savagery. The king of Arcadia, he ruled with a terribly cruel and iron fist, populating his tribe with many beastly sons to many different wives. He believed himself, as king, more powerful than the gods, who lazed in their lofty thrones atop Mount Olympus. And so, when the gods themselves came to test him for that hubris, he sought to test them back. As Zeus arrived in Arcadia and the people prepared a celebration in his honor, Lycaon devised a scheme to put the god in his place. Beastly to his core, he slaughtered the youngest of his sons to be prepared as the god’s unholy meal. But Zeus caught on to his schemes, and erupted in a terrible fury. He changed the king into a terrible beast: a wolf, to match his savage nature. So did Lycaon fall from a king of men to the lonely progenitor of a cursed kind, and all for naught but his own conceit._

“So,” says the Pierrot, “do you still wish to go through with your little rebellion, Lycaon?”

The Wolfman, silent for all his story, leaps at the chance to bite back. “ _Now_ what the hell are you trying to tell me?” he snaps. “First you looked down on me for not fighting back enough, and now you’re threatening me to stay silent?” 

“Threatening? Oh heaven’s no, I’m only asking you to make that decision yourself.” He hears the Pierrot shuffling somewhere above him. “Like I said, I am a curious thing, and I’m willing to take the occasional hit if it means getting my answers. So tell me, Wolfman, is the tale true or false?”

The Wolfman snarls, “ _False_.”

“Good. Now, what is this terrible secret of mine you’ve managed to suss out?”

The shifting stops, but as it does, something catches the Wolfman’s eye. The end of a satin ribbon dangles down the side of the cage. Recognition dawns on him immediately, so he acts without a second thought. His hand reaches out for it and he yanks. _Hard_. 

The Pierrot yelps as his arm is pulled astray. There’s a loud thud of what sounds like his shoulder hitting the lip of the cage top as the rest of his arm is pulled down by the ribbon tied across his wrist. His resistance comes soon after, but it’s all too late, and it seems the angle is all too wrong. Over a pained grunt, he hisses, “ _Wolfm_ —what are you _doing_?"

The Wolfman latches his other hand across the Pierrot’s exposed forearm, even as the young man lets loose a curse and struggles valiantly against him. With a carefully angled claw, he catches the edge of the bow and unfurls the ribbon’s tightly-overlapped loops one by one until the silk falls to the ground, exposing the evidence he knows to be there.

The white puckering of skin catches the waxing moonlight. A single W, curling like ink across the thin skin of his wrist.

“ _Wicce_ ,” The Wolfman reads out, smoothing the pad of his thumb across the scarred ridge of skin to verify the mark for what it is. He sneers. “Well, would you look at that—a freak leading the freakshow. Did you figure you could go unnoticed if you hid yourself around us? ’Cause who would ever suspect a _witch_ to hide in plain sight among the rest of the beasts, is that it?”

He turns his glare upwards, ready to lord his hollow, bitter victory over the Pierrot, but as he tilts his chin up, he is suddenly hit with the most curious sense of deja-vu. Because he’d dragged the Pierrot’s arm down just enough that, like a fish snared by a hook, he could have no other option but to follow after. Now, leaned half-way over the edge of the cage, the moon filters in through the curtain of the Pierrot’s dark hair, hung upside-down just like that night not long ago. 

But there is something different this time. This time, their gazes meet. This time, the Pierrot’s youthful, dark eyes blow wide, like the fathomless depths of dark indigo night-water.

The Wolfman blinks, suddenly struck. “Your mask…”

But before he can say anything more, he finds himself all at once jerked forward. The wrist twists in his grip, but he instinctively holds tight and follows it as it goes, wincing as his cheek crashes into the cold iron bars. A moment later, once the movement has stopped, he cracks his eye open and sees the Pierrot right himself to standing, left arm still caught within the tight snare of his sturdy grip. In one fluid motion, the Pierrot—with the hand still free—carefully slips his porcelain mask back to his face, but not before the Wolfman catches one last glimpse of his eyes, half lidded and heavy against the irritated cut of his brow.

“Very clever, Wolfman. I never would have thought you the kind to use dirty tactics to get your way.” His oozing, lilting tone almost hides the ire simmering below. “Really putting the _Lycaon_ in _lycanthrope_ , aren’t you?”

The Wolfman tightens his grip. “Was I wrong?”

The Pierrot cocks his head aside, lifting his free hand to tap a nail to the mask’s rounded lips. It clinks delicately against the porcelain. “About?”

“You know what.”

“Wrong or right, what does it really matter?” 

“Of course it matters!” the Wolfman growls, bearing his teeth. “It matters because if I’m right then that means you’re no different from the rest of us. And if _you’re_ no different from the rest of us, and you can _still_ get out there in front of the crowds spreading lies and rumors for their sick, twisted entertainment, well then…!” He feels his grip tighten, claws pricking into the Pierrot’s skin, just barely restraining from breaking the seemingly paper-thin surface. “Then where the _hell_ do you even get off, huh?” 

As the Wolfman’s angry breathing peters out, the Pierrot hums and gingerly twists his wrist against the sharp pinpricks of claws until his puckered scar faces upwards. He tilts it back and forth in the dim moonlight, as though examining it for the first time himself. The mask’s empty eyes inspect the ridges inquisitively. After a lengthy pause, he says, “Well, you have your evidence. Now what do you intend to do with it?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” the Wolfman rankles at the young man’s even, unbothered tone. “I’ll tell the rest of the crew. Someone will be sure to want to hear there’s a witch hiding among their ranks. I’m sure it’d fetch ‘em a pretty penny, turning you over, especially since you’ve already been caught once.”

“And you think they’ll believe you?” He can hear the Pierrot’s unsettling grin creep into his voice as he continues speaking. “Tell me, what reason would they have to believe the mad ravings of their own caged mutt?” 

The Wolfman curls his fingers tighter around the Pierrot’s narrow wrist and sneers. “They don’t need to believe _me_ , they just need to doubt _you_ enough to check.”

The Pierrot makes an appreciative sound. “Look at you, Wolfman, using your head.” Then he drops to his haunches, lowering himself to eye level. The smell of spice wafts in with him. “Too bad it won’t work.”

The Wolfman’s lip curls up, knuckles cracking as he tightens his grip. “You think I won’t try?”

“Oh no, I’m sure you will. You’re a wounded animal in a cage with only a couple weeks left until it’s your turn at the gallows. I think you’re desperate enough to try anything. After all, what more of a consequence could you face?” He leans in, moonlight glinting off the smooth, lacquered finish of his mask. “Am I wrong?”

At the Wolfman’s silence, he snorts. “Thought so. Now, may I _please_ have my hand back?” He gives his wrist a short tug. When the Wolfman resists, he sighs, then scoops up the ribbon from the ground at his feet and begins to loop it once more into place. “Fine then, be that way.”

“… you’re really not worried about me ratting you out.” the Wolfman says, tracking the satin sheen of the ribbon as it snakes across the Pierrot’s pale skin with narrowed eyes. “It’s not a bluff.”

“Nope, afraid I’m not. Oh, be a dear and…” He takes the loose end of the ribbon and neatly tucks it under one of the fingers tightly circled around his wrist. Then he pulls the opposite end until the loops go taut and the brand winks out of sight once more. “There we go!” he says brightly, plucking the ribbon end back out from under the Wolfman’s fingers. 

“Then why?” 

The Pierrot glances up from the mess of ribbon caught between his fingers. A half-formed, one-handed attempt at tying a bow. “Why what?”

The Wolfman glowers. “Why the _hell_ wouldn’t you be worried?”

Shrugging, the Pierrot returns to the task of trying and failing to tie his messy bow. “Don’t think too hard on it, Wolfman, you’ll give yourself wrinkles, and we need you to look as beautifully menacing as possible to keep drawing in the crowds. Now—come on—my poor, delicate wrist is bound to bruise at this rate. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” He pulls against the hand once more. 

The Wolfman barely hears the question as he continues down the looping path of his train of thought. “I could sell you out no problem,” he mutters. “Maybe even use it as a bargaining chip. It wouldn’t be hard for them to check.”

Again, a tug against his hold. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t.”

“And I know they would. I can’t hide in a crowd, but your kind can.” His face contorts in thought. “Everyone fears the monsters hidden among them more than the ones they know.”

“Did you steal that line from me?” Another tug, harsh enough to knock the Wolfman’s arm painfully against the iron bars. “Sounds like one of mine. In fact, I’m fairly certain it is—“

Then it hits him. 

“Oh,” says the Wolfman in a moment of sudden clarity. “Oh, I think I get it.”

The tendons in the Pierrot’s wrist tense just barely under the pads of the Wolfman’s fingers. He feels a subtle jump in the pulse lying below. Out loud, though, he snorts. “So you’ve said.”

“No, I think I do…” The Wolfman speaks slowly, testing the words out as they come together. “If you don’t care about them catching you, then that could mean you’re already caught. Maybe… you’re just as trapped here as I am.”

The Pierrot lets out a laugh that bites like a lashing. “Oh _very_ clever, but last I checked, Wolfman, _you’re_ the one in the cage, while I get to traipse around to my heart’s content. Doesn’t sound like a caged prisoner to me.”

He narrows his eyes in challenge. “You don’t need a cage to be trapped.”

“How _philosophical_.” The sarcasm drips. 

“Because if the stage crew knew…,” the Wolfman continues, both his momentum and the barely off-rhythm staccato of the pulse thrumming under his finger pads carrying him forward. “If they already knew what you were, then of course you wouldn’t care. And if they _did_ know, then maybe…” 

He licks his dry, cracked lips, glaring ever more fiercely. “Maybe _I’m_ not the only one headed to an execution.”

The hollow eyes of the mask stare blankly back at him.

In the Pierrot’s sudden silence, though, the Wolfman considers what he’d said once more. His eyes drop to the white line of the paper-thin wrist folded in his palm, tracing the pale veins snaking out from beneath the ribbon. He’d spun his logic on adrenaline and impulse alone, but on second thought, he realizes there might be something there. The wrist in his hands is suddenly slack again. Something is skipping in the Pierrot’s familiar phonograph song once more. 

“No, you’re not caged…,” he mutters, glancing up from his narrow, hungry focus on the Pierrot’s wrist. “But if I’m right, then why the hell _wouldn't_ you run?”

Beneath the lip of the Pierrot’s mask, the sharp, protruding line of the tendon in his neck goes taut as he swallows. The Wolfman’s eyes can’t help but track the movement, following the traitorous bob of the Pierrot’s Adam’s apple. Heightened senses catch the pulse of a vein under the skin of his neck that thrums in tandem with the fluttering underneath the pads of his fingers. The scent of clove and aniseed sits heavy on the air. Something dangerous thrums within the Wolfman, too.

But that moment of distraction proves to be his downfall, as the Pierrot makes his move and quickly slips his wrist through the loosened circle of the Wolfman’s fingers. The immediate distance he puts between them as he snaps out of arms’ reach gapes like a crack in the earth. 

“You should get your sleep,” the Pierrot says, the smooth, eerie timber of his voice sliding back into place—his phonograph needle slipping back into its familiar track. The melody that creeps in with it is a dangerous warning. “After all, you only have so many more nights of storytelling left.”

The Wolfman watches him carefully as he slips around the cage and makes for the doorway. “That’s not just true for me, though,” he calls out, “is it?”

The Pierrot unlatches the lock on the door and lets it swing open, revealing the winding, dimly-lit road they’d traveled down, each creaking turn of the wheels another move closer to their final destination. With one hand wrapped around the doorframe, he skips down the overhanging footsteps and turns back to the inside of the carriage with a flourish. 

“What would be the fun in me telling you?” comes his reply, eerie in its unwavering effervescence. “ _Goodnight_ , Wolfman.” Then, with an exaggerated bow, he swings around the side of the frame and winks out of sight.  


A fluttery warmth still lingers in the Wolfman’s fingertips, even as the chill from the night outside creeps back in. He sneers and shakes it off until they’re a familiar cold once more. 

— ❖ 3  ❖ —

The Pierrot doesn’t return to the carriage the next night, or the night after, or even the night after that. The evening air becomes the Wolfman’s only solitary companion once more, and while it means he is suddenly granted the gift of a full night’s rest again, it’s not one that comes easily. As the moonlight creeps in, bathing the dark wood around him in pale light, he lies in wait for the familiar sound of footfalls across the roof of the cage and the eerie melody of the Pierrot’s strangely enticing stories. For three nights, the two are both blissfully and irritatingly absent. 

On the fourth, just as he’s drifting off to the steady turn of the carriage wheels, he hears a noise above him. He doesn’t dare move, but still his pulse thrums back to life and his ears prick forward in anticipation. 

Then he waits. And waits some more. He waits for the Pierrot to say something, but words never come. No story, no needling. Nothing. Over the gentle rocking of the carriage along the beaten path, all he hears is the Pierrot’s steady breathing and the familiar snap of a latch being opened, shut, opened once more. It could be a nervous habit, he guesses, or maybe one meant to calm. The thought sits contemplatively at the forefront of his sleep-hazy mind.

The Wolfman waits longer still, head pillowed against his forearm and the oddly comforting scent of clove and aniseed. He swings back and forth between his impatience and restraint more times than he can count, but something rankles at the thought of breaking the silence first. The latch clicks shut, then open, then shut again, a steady rhythm. Like the hands on a clock. Like the wheels of the carriage. Like a pulse, metallic.

Eventually, he must fall asleep, because when he opens his eyes next, it’s to dewy morning light streaming into the carriage. The latch-snap sound still lingers at the back of his mind, as though it had echoed out only a moment earlier. No other sign of the Pierrot’s presence remains, not even the smell of spice.

He turns to peer out of the porthole window as the procession comes to a stop. Outside, the carriages are pulling into another small farming town, as indiscernible in its plainness as all the ones before it and all the ones that will come after. The horses whinny as they’re unbridled and drawn off a safe distance from what will soon be the stage for yet another show. After all, it’s the townsfolk the crew aim to spook, not the horses. They are more deserving of care and pity, it seems. 

Right on schedule, the doors lining the side of the carriage are unlatched, folding aside to reveal the brawny stagehands meant to carry his cage into position. A canvas tarp is hurriedly tossed over the roof of the cage to hide him away from prying eyes eager to spoil the show. 

But before the material can flutter down completely, a glimpse of colorful fabric and a familiar cap and bells catches the Wolfman’s eye. He watches a familiar ribbon-snaked hand dip into the hidden seam of a pocket, and just as both wink out of sight behind the heavy canvas, he hears the distinct sound of a latch snap open, then shut. 

A new clue to uncovering this strange mystery he’s stumbled into. The cage lurches as it’s hoisted up by uncaring hands, so the Wolfman steadies himself with a grip on the iron bars and tucks the thought away for later. 

Later, as he hears the show start somewhere out beyond the thick cover of the tarp, the Wolfmansits back and idly considers his next move. He still itches with the desire to test the Pierrot’s bravado, if only to feel like he’s not losing at a game he never truly choose to play. Perhaps he’ll try it on that mousey stagehand the next time she comes around. Of all the crew, she always looks the most nervous, hunched over her sewing needles day in and day out, tucked far away from the horrors that might break free from their cages to snatch her up. Hidden behind her round spectacles, seems like the most distrusting of the lot. Who better to stir up some doubt and discontent within? 

He’s stirred from the thought by an outcry from the crowd, half-way through another of the Pierrot’s seemingly spell-spun tales of horror. 

“To hell with the run a’ the mill freaks and shapeshifters!” the man’s gruff voice rings out. “Give us the real show!”

The nervous clucking of the townspeople lowers to a hush. The Wolfman shifts, trying to find a tear in the fabric to peer through in order to catch their reactions.

Over the low rumble of their whispers, he hears the Pierrot ask, “And what, sir, would that be, exactly?”

“Don’t play coy with us, Fool. You’re not the first traveling show to come through these parts. We all know where this road leads.” 

The murmuring quiets down to nothing. Silence falls over the crowd. The Wolfman strains to find an opening in his cover to see what's happening, and shocks when a shadow falls over him. The shape of the Pierrot eclipses the sunlight, casting his form against the canvas like shadow puppetry.

He watches as the Pierrot’s hand snakes once more to the crook of his hip. The snap of a latch rings out, only loud enough for an ear trained for it, one pricked delicately towards it.

“Ah,” the Pierrot surmises, voice honey-sweet but laced with poison, “you wish to see a _witch_.”

The crowd doesn’t respond, but the answer hangs heavy and palpable in the air.

The shadow shrugs, unconcerned. “Not exactly the program I had planned, but I suppose we can make do. I’m nothing if not an _excellent_ entertainer, after all.”

Sudden dread seeps in like ice through the Wolfman’s veins. He whips his head towards the stagehands he knows lurk somewhere behind his cage, but their conversation never misses a beat. They continue on in their same, hushed droll. They’re obviously listening, but also obviously unconcerned.

It wasn’t a bluff, the Wolfman realizes. They _know_.

“Well then bring ‘em out!” the man barks excitedly. The rest of the gathered folk echoes the sentiment in steadily building waves. Their goading grows louder, a tide creeping in. 

The Pierrot’s laugh rings out over the noise, discordant. 

“Oh, good sir,” he purrs, “what makes you think we’d keep them trapped in cages?” 

The dangerous note of his question—so blatant in its implication to the Wolfman now that he _knows—_ cuts through the bravado of the townsfolk. Their hungry tide ebbs back once more. 

The Pierrot continues, “It’s true, this is a well traveled road. I’m sure you’ve seen it all. What, then, could we ever offer you that you haven’t already encountered before?” He begins to pace, shadow creeping back and forth across the canvas like a predator in motion. “You want us to parade a witch out in front of you? _Please_. That would be so predictable, so _dull.”_

He stops, turning outwards. “Now ask yourselves this: you all come out to see the freak-show, thinking yourselves brave, but for what? Gawking at the beasts hidden behind bars? The ones already beaten down and ready for the pyre? What _audacity_ do you have to brag?”

The crowd is silent, but still they hang on the Pierrot’s every word. That, more than anything, speaks volumes.

“I can give you something better than a silly show,” he croons, a saccharine note dripping back into his tone. “I can give you what you really crave: _Doubt_. _Fear_. More importantly, the thrill of both that you all so blindly chase.”

His shadow tilts ever so slightly, angled back to the canvas curtain behind him. “After all, the monster hidden among you is far more frightening than the one you know.”

The Wolfman’s hackles raise at the taunt, a low growl escaping him. Judging by the Pierrot’s small, barely audible chuckle, he hears it. 

Then he reaches up, the bells of his hat jingling as he sweeps it down and out towards the crowd. 

“I can give it all to you,” he announces. “For a little extra coin, that is.”

And like flies to honey, the villagers flock, and his silvered tongue spins them a tale as vile and haunting as they pay for.

The Wolfman is not surprised to hear footfalls across the roof of his cage that night. 

“Did you enjoy today’s show?” the Pierrot asks, traipsing across the metal to the steps of an unheard tune. 

The Wolfman sits up. It’s the most he has said to him in almost a week. “It was a dangerous bet, that’s for sure.”

“Aw,” the Pierrot coos. “You’re just mad I snatched your little rebellion out from your fingers before you could act on it. Even though I gave you ample time. What a shame, but it was your loss.”

The Wolfman settles his back against the bars, folding his arms across his chest defensively. “I…,” he starts, face scrunching and voice lowering until his next admission is lost completely under his breath. 

“What was that?” the Pierrot singsongs.

“I wasn’t gonna,” he snaps, cowed under his own admission. “I was never gonna rat you out.”

To that, the Pierrot hums thoughtfully. “Sentimental, just as I predicted. What, couldn’t work up the nerve to snitch on me?”

The Wolfman hunches further into himself. “It was a stupid thought,” he starts. “Just sick, petty revenge, but still… I _needed_ it—so _badly_ —and that’s…”

The Pierrot snorts. “This isn’t confessional, Wolfman. I’m sure it was a tantalizing prospect, thinking you could go through with it. Thinking you could give the nasty ol’ ringleader his just desserts. A small, ultimately meaningless attempt at action—I understand.”

“But I _couldn’t_ ,” the Wolfman grits out, feeling his claws bite into the skin of his palms. “And after all that, it didn’t even _matter_ in the end, did it?”

A sigh breathes through the carriage. “No. No it didn’t. I tried to tell you.”

The Wolfman loosens his tight grip on himself with a sigh. “They really do know, then. You really are one of the freaks.”

“Well, yes,” the Pierrot replies, “But I’d say I’m a little bit better off than a poor mutt in a nasty cage, that’s for sure.”

The Wolfman elbows the bars, making the cage shake and the Pierrot startle, but it’s a halfhearted attempt. If the Pierrot could see it, his own small, rueful smile probably wouldn’t help his case either. 

A silence falls over them both. A comfortable one, almost companionable. It feels like an armistice, of sorts. The creaking of the wheels fills in the gaps between them. 

After a little while, the Wolfman speaks up. “Your stories,” he asks, “are those…?” The thought trails off, and the Pierrot seems to latch on to his hesitation eagerly. 

“Spells? Sorcery?” he says, his needling smile laced into the words. “A bit of theurgy?”

The Wolfman hides his discomfort in the defensive hunch of his shoulders but grunts in affirmation. 

The Pierrot laughs. “Why would I waste my time and energy on all that? No, I’m just an _excellent_ storyteller, Wolfman, nothing of the supernatural involved. I’m almost offended at the implication.”

“I didn’t mean—,” the Wolfman cuts himself off at the Pierrot’s sharp laugh at his expense. “I just…” He chews on his words. “You enjoy playing into their fears. Taunting them, being purposefully nasty. But they still listen to you in the end. _Pay_ for it, even. How the hell does that work?”

“Because it’s what they _want,_ Wolfman. They won’t admit it, but people love to be frightened.”

“You keep saying that,” the Wolfman scoots forward, trying to angle his head enough to get a glimpse of the Pierrot from his vantage point on the ground below. “But what does that even mean?”

“It means that they love the thrill that their own doubt gives them,” comes the reply. “To the man so comfortable in and sure of his own innocence, it’s a win-win of sorts. They love to be given reason to distrust others, and they love how it makes them feel more virtuous in their own presumed lack of sin.”

“Presumed?”

“ _Assumed_ , Wolfman, do keep up.”

“I know what _presumed_ means,” he snaps. “I meant…” 

“Ah,” the Pierrot shifts somewhere above him. “Well, let me ask you this, Wolfman: who would you say were the real sinners at the show today? The downtrodden animals on display, or the ones who come to revel in the sport we make of them? And what about the ones who put them on display in the first place?”

The Wolfman can’t fight the angry curl of his lip, baring a fang. “Well what about you, who gets to sit comfortably in the middle?”

“Oh, I know where I stand.” Suddenly, legs swing over the side of the cage, and soon after the Pierrot hops down the short distance to the ground. He spins on one heel, then brings both together with a crisp click across the hardwood. The mask gleams in the pale moonlight. Even with it in the way, the Wolfman can sense his smarmy grin. "At least I don’t try to play at what I’m not.” 

He folds down into a crosslegged position, and the Wolfman moves forward to face him. “So what is this?” he asks. “You get off putting all us freaks down as long as you can hide among the rest of humankind? You’ll even badmouth your own, just as long as you stick it to those folks in your own strange way?” He snorts wryly. “That’s a sick sense of justice if I’ve ever seen one.”

“Call it what you will,” the Pierrot says, idly picking at one of his nails. “I do what I have to to get by and pass the time. And it just so happens I’m _very_ good at it.”

“Good at selling us all out,” the Wolfman snidely corrects.

The Pierrot’s mask tilts up, moonlight gleaming. “Oh, did I?”

The Wolfman’s hackles begin to rise, but then he gives pause. Something about the Pierrot’s tone invites a second guess. He thinks back on all the various tales the young man has spun for the hungry masses all but begging for them.

“Oh…,” he starts, settling back down, “you conniving little rat.”

The Pierrot tilts his head, inviting him to follow through with the thought. 

“That’s why you want my input on all your odd stories,” he explains. “You don’t want to know what’s true. You just want to know the _lies_.”

Thalia’s porcelain half-smile winks back at him, knowingly, though the Pierrot remains tight-lipped. 

The Wolfman huffs, leaning back on his arms and letting his head fall back. “Fine, I get it. So then the tales you you told the crowd of witches —”

“Oh, complete hogwash,” the Pierrot says flippantly, tossing his own head back with a laugh. “I mean really—weigh us against holy books, have us read scriptures, search for a witch’s mark? The list goes on and on. Nonsense, all of it! But people will believe just about anything.”

“Then,” the Wolfman asks, leaning forward ever so slightly, “what _is_ true?”

The Pierrot lowers his chin coyly, fixing the Wolfman with the Muses’ blank stare. “I don’t know, got a good story for me? Maybe we can work out a deal.”

The Wolfman clicks his tongue disappointedly and sits back. “Point taken. How about just one question then?”

“Depends on the question,” the Pierrot replies, leaning his chin onto the careful fold of his fingers, elbows perched on his crossed legs. 

The Wolfman decides to take advantage of an opportunity. “Alright. What the hell’ve you got in your pocket?”

At that, the Pierrot cocks his head. His right arm tenses, coiled as though ready to follow the magnetic pull of the mystery item but seemingly thinking better of it. “Why is it you want to know?” he asks innocently.

The Wolfman shrugs. “More curiosity than anything. It’s been driving me mad ever since I noticed you always grabbing for it when no one’s looking.”

“Hm,” the Pierrot rocks his head back and forth across his bridged fingers. Then he shrugs. “Fine. What do I care? It’s a pocket knife. My grandfather’s.”

The Wolfman fixes him with a look, unimpressed. “No, it’s not.” He’d recognize the sound.

The Pierrot hums, impressed. “Fine, you got me. I steal a few coins from the hat after every performance before I have to fork the pot over.”

“Not that either.”

“The lucky pair of dice from my gambling days.”

“Nope.”

“Pillbox.”

The Wolfman considers that against his front-running theories. “Not a chance. Would’ve heard the pills inside.” 

“Oho, your hearing is that good? _Fascinating_.”

“How about a locket?” the Wolfman supplies, testing out an idea.

The Pierrot’s arm jumps, ever so slightly.

“That’s quite the leap. But no.” 

“Liar,” the Wolfman says, bearing a toothy grin. 

“Oh?” The Pierrot leans in further. “And how’d you know that?”

He leans in to match. “I didn’t ’til you just said so.”

The Pierrot appears taken aback for the briefest moment, then he lets out a laugh that fills all the hollow pockets of both his mask and the carriage around them with warmth. Something in it is so bright, and so very unlike any laugh he’s heard the Pierrot’s phonograph record play. The Wolfman inches towards it hungrily.

“Fine,” he says, “I can admit a defeat. Perhaps I’ve underestimated you. I suppose even wolves have their cunning.”

The Wolfman can’t hold back his own laugh as he brings a knee up to lean his chin against. “Alright, then, the locket—what’s the significance of it?”

“Ah-ah, I only said I’d answer _one_ question.”

“Oh, come on. What more could you possibly have to hide?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Actually,” the Wolfman’s lips pull up at the corners. A strange, foreign warmth licks up through his chest. “I kinda would.”

The Pierrot shocks still. He sidesteps the admission, takes his time thinking the question over for a moment. Then he replies, “It’s insurance.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“A third question now! Sorry, but I’m not _that_ generous.”

“Right,” the Wolfman relaxes further into his folded knee, melting into the gentle curve like warmed molasses. “Is it some sort of magic?”

“Think what you will,” the Pierrot taps a finger coyly against the lips of the mask. “I don’t kiss and tell so easily.”

Again, the Wolfman snorts, even as he slowly sobers under the weight of his next thought. 

“Well,” he asks, smile fading in shades, “is it the kind of insurance to get you out of an execution?” He swallows thickly. “‘Cause I could really use some of that.”

The steadily growing warmth in the air begins to chill. The moon’s glow goes from bright to haunting. Slowly, the Pierrot’s lowers his hand to rest in the curve of his lap. “Oh, couldn’t we all.” He exhales a short, somber sigh that breathes through the carriage, “Sorry, Wolfman, but magic doesn’t quite work that way.”

The Wolfman lowers his gaze to the floor, tucking further into himself. A thought itches inside of him, brought to life by the Pierrot’s distant wording. After a moment, he mutters, “Kaito.”

“Pardon?”

“My name,” he says. “You can call me Kaito.”

“Awfully chummy of you.”

“Well…,” the Wolfman chews over his next words. “I figure that we’re both stuck in the same boat, in a way. Why not get to know each other?”

“Goodness, you really _are_ a pack animal,” the Pierrot replies blandly.

“Don’t be an ass. I _mean_ it.”

“As do I,” the Pierrot replies. His voice turns eerily impassive as it nestles into the hollows of the mask, now concealing more than just his face. “Not much of a point to getting attached now, only a mere ten-day from the end of the line.”

“Then we get out of here before then, give ourselves more time.” The Wolfman tilts his chin up, a near-forgotten ember suddenly flickering to life in the pit of his gut, slowly warming him from the inside out. “Why not work together, find a way out? It’s not so impossible to think that could work.”

It’s curious how, even with the mask in place, he can still sense the Pierrot’s expression shutter through his body language alone. The sharp line of his shoulders, the tense pull of the tendons in his arms. “I don’t suppose,” he says slowly, lines drawing taut, “that you’d be in the mood for another story?”

The Wolfman narrows his gaze. “Don’t dodge the question.”

“Oh, I’m not.” 

The empty eyes of the mask bore into him insistently. Wrestling back his temper, he says, “If it will satisfy you, then fine. Let’s hear it.”

The Pierrot, ever the performer, slips back into his act smooth as silk.

_Thiess of Kaltenbrun_

_Thiess was an average beggar, called to the courts of Livonia as witness for a trial. To the crowd’s surprise, as he took to the stand, he began to recount a story—a claim that he was not man, but wolf. His shapeshifting skill, he told them, was a gift, given to him by a stranger, turning him from man to wolf and from vagrant to warrior. Thiess spoke of a calling. To the judges of Jürgensburg he revealed himself to be a hound of God, sent forth to do away with the witches sent forth from Hell by the Devil himself, ordered to flock the mortal world. He was no monster, Thiess insisted, but a protector of man. And yet, for all his bravery, Thiess received no accolades. Like animals themselves, the people turned on him like they would any other sinner. After all, they cried, who could ever trust the word of a known beast?_

“Fake, all of it,” the Wolfman is quick to insist as the Pierrot’s haunting tune fades out. He presses in as close into the bars as he can, if only to fight his way back into what he can feel is the Pierrot’s quickly-drifting orbit. “And I’m not going to let you use it as an out.”

“I’m honestly shocked you got the point of that.”

“ _Fool—_ ”

“Oil and water don’t mix. Witches and weres the same,” the Pierrot says, so matter-of-fact that it makes the Wolfman snarl. “You’d be wise to realize that.”

“Why are you trying so hard to find an excuse?” he asks. “What do you possibly have to lose from working with me?”

The Pierrot turns his head aside. “Don’t act like you understand anything, Wolfman.”

“Then tell me what I don’t. Spin it like another one of your stories, I don’t care. I just can’t stand to just watch you use words to fight me off.” 

He reaches out, catching the Pierrot’s thin wrist in the circle of his fingers once more. Gentler this time. They remember the shape of it, as they do the pulse thrumming below. The Pierrot doesn’t pull away. He drifts back into orbit.

“Come on, the chances of two are better than one,” the Wolfman insists. “Almost hate to admit it, but you’re clever. I know you could think of something if you wanted to.”

“You _know_ ,” the Pierrot repeats, his words pitched to a purposefully discordant tune. “What could you possibly know about me, Wolfman?”

“Not as much as I want to, Fool,” he admits again, more insistent than before.

The Pierrot goes tightlipped once more, turning his head askance. Deep in the pit of his gut, the Wolfman’s ember spark continues to burn, insistently fighting to not go out completely. The pulse thrumming under the pads of his fingers keeps it alive. He smoothes his fingers over it to chase its steady, honest drumbeat.

Then the Pierrot mutters something, soft enough to get lost in the mask’s curved hollows. 

The Wolfman frowns and leans in, “What?”

The mask turns back to him sharply. “Kokichi. _My_ name, you dolt. Let’s call it a trade for getting my arm back.” 

The pulse under his fingers jumps. The ember inside the Wolfman flares. He grins, lopsided.

“ _Kokichi_ ,” he says, tasting it on his tongue.

The Pierrot squirms. For all his words and the loose circle of the Wolfman’s fingers, though, he does not pull away.

Something catches on that ember spark, igniting. Its flames lick up inside him.

Spurred on by a sudden boldness, the Wolfman reaches out through the bars, putting cautious fingers to the cool, porcelain mask. Still, the Pierrot does not pull away. Emboldened, he traces over roundness of the cheek, up to the sad cut of Melpomene’s brow, down the gentle curve of of Thalia’s smile. His fingers follow the beautiful spider-cracks held in place beneath the veneer, carefully tracing the mask to its end. There, he dips one finger under the jut of the chin, catching one claw against the lip of the mask. The pulse under his other hand thrums. Ever so slightly, he draws the mask towards him.

But a hand catches his wrist, stopping him. “Sorry, but you haven’t given me enough of a reason to leave this role yet,” the Pierrot murmurs. The Wolfman can feel the warmth of his breath brush softly against his knuckle as it whispers through the crevices of the mask.

He gently draws the Wolfman’s searching fingers away and lowers them back to his lap. Even so, he does not let go. 

They sit there, each holding the other and being held in turn. The night is quiet around them, but the glow of it bright across the carriage floor.

“This story,” the Pierrot eventually says, as soft as the moonlight, “most certainly does not have a happy ending, for neither you nor I.”

The Wolfman opens his mouth to counter him, but the Pierrot interrupts with an insistent tone, pressing his thumb none-too-gently into the soft juncture of his wrist. “ _But_ , I enjoy hearing stories as much as I enjoy spinning them.” He smoothes the pad of his finger over the Wolfman’s skin, following the line of the tendon up to the jut of his wrist bone. The Muses’ eyes follow it pensively. “If you can give me an ending to this story that I can believe, maybe I can be persuaded to follow it.”

Then the hand falls away, and he moves to stand. Unlike before, the Wolfman lets the Pierrot’s wrist slip from his hand without complaint. He draws his own back into his lap to saver the warmth. “Aye,” he says, a firm set to his jaw as he nods. “I can do that.”

Thalia smiles down at him so hopefully, just as Melpomene’s tear tracks catch the pale light. “I certainly look forward to you trying,” he says in farewell. “Goodnight, Wolfman.”

As he slips out of the door, the Wolfman sits back against the bars, tracing his fingers over the warmth in his wrist before it can fade. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs to no one but himself. “Goodnight.”

Sleep beckons him in easily that night, but it is a sleep filled to the brim with equal parts hope and unease both.

Only a scant ten-day remains, after all.

— ❖ 4  ❖ —

His first plan is, admittedly, a foolish one in retrospect. 

“We pull into the next town,” he says to the Pierrot, “And I find an opening to jump the stagehands when they come to carry me off.”

The Pierrot doesn’t even bother to look up from where he is bent over a tear in the seam of his stage coat, needle in hand. He looks different, stripped part-way of the costume. The simple linen tunic underneath makes him look younger, more innocuous, even with the mask still in place. The Wolfman doesn’t mean to read too much into it, but the vulnerability of shedding the performer’s skin makes something in him sing happily. “You attack them from _inside_ your cage?” the Pierrot asks. 

He pulls a face. “No, I’m already out. _Obviously._ ”

“And how did you get out?”

“You stole the key and opened it for me.”

“Did I, now?”

“Squirreled away in your pockets,” the Wolfman says, nodding to the motley heap of fabric bunched in his lap. “Like that locket of yours. You pick-pocketed the crew when they weren’t looking, some time during the setup.”

“How bold of you to assume that’s something I’m capable of.”

The Wolfman cocks an eyebrow. “You telling me it’s not?”

“Oh, I never said that,” the Pierrot purrs. “But alright then—let’s say I steal the key. I assume I do so right before the show?”

“Exactly.”

“So in this scenario we attempt our grand escape in front of a crowd of riled up villagers, thirsty for blood.” He snorts, pulling the loop of his latest stitch taut with a sharp, chiding tug of his wrist. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know that the townsfolk wouldn’t be too scared to fight back.”

“And _you_ don’t know that they would.” The Pierrot starts another stitch. “And _I_ do not like the odds of that gamble.”

The Wolfman shifts to fit his chin into his hand as he watches the back and forth motion of the Pierrot’s hand. “Then we act after the show, after the crowd has left.”

“Right when the rest of the crew is free enough to chase us down.” He thumbs the needle through the fabric once more. “And with the horses not even fixed to the carriages yet. Tell me, can you outrun a horse? I know I certainly can’t.”

Another loop of thread cinches closed under the Pierrot’s careful fingers. The Wolfman frowns. “I don’t see you coming up with anything better,” he grouses.

The needle glints in the light as it bites into the fabric once more. The mask does too, looking up to regard the Wolfman. “As I recall, the deal is that it’s _your_ story to tell. And this one is not very convincing.”

The needle loops once more, the thread dancing between the split in the cloth like a grinning maw. Then the Pierrot slowly draws the needle towards himself once more, letting the motley’s horrible smile cinch back into nothing. With both hands, he smoothes out his work—looking over it with a careful eye—then draws it up to his face. He dips the fabric under the edge of the mask to bring it to his mouth. 

The Wolfman tries not to stare, but it’s hard not to try to inch forward, just to catch a glimpse beyond the Pierrot’s ever-present veil. 

With a short snap, the Pierrot draws his hands back down, the finished work in one hand, the split thread in the other. 

“A tip, from one storyteller to another.” He stands, tucking the needle point into the piping of his coat lapel like a poor man’s corsage. “The key to crafting a good, believable story,” he remarks, swinging the garment back across his shoulders, “is to follow a strong, narrative thread.”

The Wolfman frowns, unimpressed. Thalia’s smile catches the light, winking. 

“I thought you might like that,” he simpers as he does up the clasps across his chest, one by one, slipping the costume and the role on once more. “A good attempt, though, I’ll give you that. Try to be more creative next time.”

He leaves not long after.

❖

The next night goes similarly.

With his back against the bars on the opposite side of the cage, the Pierrot turns his head aside to face the Wolfman’s awaiting gaze. As ever, the Wolfman can’t see his face, but he can hear the unimpressed arch of his brow as he flatly parrots, “Poison?”

The Wolfman nods firmly. “In the dinner pot. Or any of the communal meals, doesn’t matter. The next stop we make before town, we lace the food, let everyone else have their fill, and then make a run for it once they give out.”

“ _We_?” The Pierrot raps his knuckles against the metal bars behind him to punctuate his point.

The Wolfman’s mouth twists tartly. “ _You_.” He fits himself against the bars beside the Pierrot. “In any case, that takes a chase out of the picture, so no gamble. We can make a break for it with a good head start, and we’ll be far from any other townsfolk to rat us out. We could even take the horses to really slow them down.”

“And where,” the Pierrot asks, “do we _get_ this convenient poison of ours?”

The Wolfman’s bravado dims. He works his open mouth a few times, then says, “I guess I figured, what with your whole…” He makes a useless gesture with one hand. 

With a sigh, the Pierrot shifts his body further so his shoulder rests between the cages bars, hips canted towards the Wolfman. “Let’s say I could use what you seem to believe is my whole,” he mimics the Wolfman’s motions, a sarcastic snap to the wave of his hand, “and I were to bubble, bubble, toil and trouble the meal into a witch’s brew. What do you suppose I _use_ for that, hm? What kind of supplies would I need? And where would I get them for that matter?”

“I figured you would fill in the blanks,” the Wolfman replies, a bit dumbly. 

The porcelain clinks against one of the bars as the Pierrot slumps his temple against it, arms crossing. “Then let me fill them in for you. Even if I _did_ somehow have all the frankincense, sage, yarrow, and whatever all else you could think of at my disposal, there would still be one critical hangup to your plan.”

“And that is?”

“ _An’ it harm none, do what ye will,_ ” he recites matter-of-factly. “So here we are, kept in captivity by the cardinal declaration of freedom. The irony certainly isn’t lost on me.”

The Wolfman cocks his head, processing the Pierrot’s words. “You… can’t hurt people with your magic?”

The Pierrot scoffs. “Not unless you want it thrust back at you threefold, and in the case of poisoning?” He draws his hand up to his breast mockingly. “Perish the thought.”

“I just thought…,” the Wolfman trails off, gaze tilting off guiltily.

“You thought wrong.” The hand lowers slowly, folding into the Pierrot’s lap. Then a moment later, he snaps back to his usual verve. “Not that I can blame you, what with all the scoundrels out there spreading lies about our practices. The nerve of those rapscallions, can you imagine?”

The Wolfman gives a wry snort as he knocks his arm against the bars, nudging his elbow into the soft curve of the Pierrot’s lower back. The Pierrot tuts and grouses at the treatment, but lets the Wolfman’s arm linger all the same. 

“So no poison,” the Wolfman eventually sighs, letting his arm fall to his side to brush up against the back of the Pierrot’s own. He leeches off the other’s warmth greedily against the chill of the night. To his surprise, nothing discourages him from doing so.

“No,” the Pierrot agrees. “Not unless you wish to die a terrible death in the midst of your own escape attempt. And as romantic as the classic literature makes those sorts of stories out to be, that’s not how I plan to go.”

The last remark causes a funny feeling to stir up the Wolfman’s insides. He swallows against it and says, half-joking, “You have a plan for that?” 

The Pierrot angles the Muses’ gaze coyly up at him. “Just that I can think of more romantic ways for my story to end."

The sensation simmers inside him. He wets his dry lips. “Such as?”

The Pierrot leans in, balancing on his arm. His fingers brush against the Wolfman’s own, light as a feather. “You’re the storyteller this time,” he purrs. “You tell me.”

But before the Wolfman can say anything more, he’s already up and moving for the door. And as warm as the Pierrot’s reception had been, and as enticing as the drag of his fingers across his own had felt, something in his exit still feels like a retreat. He wonders why, as the faithful moonlight creeps in as his companion in the Pierrot’s stead.

With it, another night come and gone.

❖

The evenings go by one after the next, each with a new idea that falls short in some way or another. Too dull, too complicated. Too risky, too foolish. Each time, the Pierrot carefully dissects each and every one of his well-laid plans with an ease that, while gentle and fair, stinks of carefree resignation. The Wolfman’s frustration builds, only kept at bay by the stubborn, dead-set desire he has to prove both the Pierrot and Fate itself wrong.

And so, with only a few nights left and all other options exhausted, he finally arrives at the obvious story to tell.

“After everyone has fallen asleep,” the Wolfman says, point-blank, “you steal the key and bring it here with you. Then we leave. Together.”

The Pierrot’s silence stretches, creeping into the hollows of the Wolfman’s unease with cold, spindly fingers. 

“Just like that?” he asks. 

The Wolfman nods. “Just like that.”

Thalia and Melpomene gaze back at him, unblinking. The Pierrot is eerily still. “That’s your simplest solution yet.”

“Sometimes a simple one is all you need,” he counters, a stubborn set to his jaw.

Eventually, the Pierrot replies, “I suppose so,” and the conversation ends. 

Or at least that’s what the Wolfman is made to think, until the following night. 

It doesn’t take long for him to notice that his nightly companion is later than usual. As the evening stretches on, he watches the moon steadily rise in the sky from the port window, tracking the arc of it across the carriage floor as the minutes, then hours pass. 

The gentle rocking of the carriage and the creaking of the wheels both lull him to half-rest, but soon he wakes to an unfamiliar sound. This time it’s not the bars rattling, as they usually do when the Pierrot makes his nightly entrance from the hatch on the roof. Instead it is a bolt being slid out of place and an unfamiliar door creaking open with a terrible whine. The Wolfman pushes himself up on one arm to turn to the sound. 

The cage door is opened, and leaned against the frame with a key ring dangling from loose fingers is the Pierrot. 

Recognition creeps in molasses-slow. The Wolfman’s gaze tracks from his face to the open door, down to the keys—on those, it lingers. The ring itself is nothing special, the keys just regular skeleton keys themselves, but somehow they feels like _more_. The way the light catches on them, the way they swing in time with the gentle rocking of the caravan, the way the Pierrot’s fingers curl around the metal so loosely, as though it isn’t somehow laden with not only the weight of all its iron, but the heavy price of both their lives as well. 

Wetting his suddenly-dry lips, the Wolfman digs the heel of his palm into his eyes, but when he lowers them, the scene doesn’t change. The Pierrot cocks his head at him in quiet invitation.

Before he can even think, the Wolfman is up on his feet. He crosses to the Pierrot in two easy strides, then sweeps the scrawny weight of him up into his arms, even easier. A full-bodied, breathy laugh escapes him. The ring of keys clatters to the cage floor. The Pierrot lets out a funny little sound as he’s lifted off the ground, and the Wolfman feels his hands scramble for purchase at his shirt as he swings them both around in clumsy circles. 

He doesn’t quite think about the forgotten familiarity of such intimacy, or of the lost family that he once shared it with, both too long ago to remember the warmth yet not long ago enough to forget the sting. Those thoughts will come in time—both their guilt and their longing—but the punch-drunk elation outweighs all thought and reason for the time being. He loses himself to the moment, to the warmth, to the hope blossoming anew inside him.

His dizzy waltz-steps send him crashing into the cage wall with a laugh, but he barely registers it. Righting himself on unsteady legs, he catches his bearings, then lets the Pierrot’s feet touch back down to solid ground. With it, his hands jump to the boy’s shoulders, then up to his neck, cradling the curve of his nape in disbelief. As Thalia and Melpomene stare at him with their wide, struck eyes, he tucks his bubbling laughter into the mussed-up tuft of hair at the crown of the Pierrot’s head, feeling fingers twist tighter into the rough linen of his own shirt. 

“I can’t believe you,” he pants, breathless from the head-rush. “You got it. You _actually_ got it—how in the _hell?_ ” He barks out another laugh, eyes scrunching closed as he instinctively noses into the Pierrot’s hair and sucks in a long, heady breath of familiar clove and aniseed.

The Pierrot squirms, and the Wolfman can feel his pulse against the heel of his palm. “You really are an overgrown mutt,” he mutters into the Wolfman’s chest, not unkindly. 

“An overgrown mutt you kept crawling back to.”

The Pierrot only hums, still picking away at the shirt under his fingers.

The Wolfman pulls back, gazing down at the Pierrot with bright eyes. “Guess my story wasn’t half bad,” he says, thumbing across the hinge of his jaw just to chase the warmth spreading across the skin there. 

The cold line of the porcelain grazes his thumb, but he barely pays it any mind as the Pierrot’s pulse flutters under his hold, even when the boy scoffs, “It was manageable.”

“Yeah?” His open-mouthed smile is a wolfish cut across his face. “Well, I’ll take it.”

He steps back to hold the Pierrot at arm’s length, still thoughtlessly palming at every inch of skin he can just so he can chase the living warmth of him. Every sense of his feels electric charged, making him almost tipsy with the overstimulation. “Alright,” he starts, thoughts racing a mile a minute, “we’re still a good while away from dawn. If you’ve got the whole set of keys, then maybe we could even make our way through the rest of the caravan. We could free all the others. You’d have to do the leading, but if we’re fast enough and quiet enough we can—” 

A tug at his shirt cuts him short, and he tips his head down in question. The Muses gaze up at him steadily as the Pierrot says, “No.”

The Wolfman’s smile dims a shade. “No?”

The mask tips back and forth, each shake another weight settling itself in the Wolfman’s gut. “Every storyteller knows a well-spun tale is best kept short and simple, lest it lose all its believability. You’d do well to do the same.”

The Wolfman breathes an empty laugh against an unease building in him. “So you’re saying we just… leave? Right now?”

“No,” the Pierrot quietly replies. “Not quite.”

The warmth the Wolfman had greedily stolen begins to fade.

“No,” he says, feeling a growl build in the hollow pit of his chest. “ _No_ , that wasn’t part of my plan.”

“I said your story was manageable, not infallible.” 

“I don’t give a damn. I said _we_ were going to leave— _together_.”

The Pierrot is unmoved. His jaw clenches under the Wolfman’s hand. “There’s only one way for this story to end for you that isn’t at the gallows and you know it. Time is running scarce. Take your out now while you can.”

“To hell with that!” the Wolfman snarls, gripping the Pierrot’s shoulders tightly. “What’s stopping you from going with me, huh?”

The Pierrot goes as tight-lipped as the ceramic veil across his face.

He’s growing tired of the mask’s easily-afforded retreat. Frustration boils deep within him. “Y’know, for all the stories you’ve told, you’ve still never told that one. What the _hell_ is it that has you chained up here?”

The porcelain is silent.

“ _Gods_ , c’mon, Ko—”

“And why exactly do I owe you that?” the Pierrot sneers, his silver-tongue sharp and dangerous enough to force the Wolfman to cut himself off and retreat back a step at its sudden emergence. “What, you think that you’ve earned those answers from me because we’ve swapped a few stories? Because you were just entertaining enough to not lose my attention? _Please_.”

The hard dip of the Wolfman’s brow only hardens further. “That won’t work on me. I know you try to be cruel to scare others off.” 

The Pierrot’s own laugh is a biting lash. “I told you before and I’ll tell you again: you know _nothing_ about me, Wolfman. Now you’d do best to keep it that way and leave while you can.”

“You’re scared _,”_ the Wolfman insists, frowning.

“It’s not _fear_ —”

But the Wolfman won’t be stopped. “What is it exactly that you’re so afraid of saying, huh? For all your lies, you can’t tell just one truth?”

“Truth is a _liability_ ,” comes the hissing retort. “One that paints a target across all the poor, bleeding hearts of all the fools of this world and sends them to slaughter.”

The Wolfman throws his hands out to his sides with a harsh, bitter laugh. “Then what more can it hurt us if we’re already almost there?”

“You don’t—!” the Pierrot cuts himself off with a frustrated intake of breath. His hands clench into fists, the crack of his knuckles a hard note against the night. 

But then the air shifts. He exhales slowly, letting his fists unfurl on the crest of it and his shoulders slump down to a flat line at its end. The phonograph needle rights itself back onto a familiar track, yet another haunting melody from the record.

He says, “ _Fine_. You want a story so badly? Then here’s one for you.”

_The ———_

_The tale this time is a sad but all too common one. It’s one of a boy, brought up rich not with coin, but with love and comfort and above all else, family. One that loved him dearly and whom he loved as well—fiercely, passionately, like a blazing fire. But while fire can comfort, it can also destroy. So when tragedy struck, senseless and terrible, then just like hungry flames, that love of his swallowed him up and ate him alive, until the kindling burnt out to ashes, leaving little in its wake. Nothing but the poor, destitute whelp of a family and a kind felled by hatred, prejudice, and a sick-sweet all-too-human hunger for the spectacle of the macabre._

_…and the –——_

_But stories do not come from nothing. Each begets another, and is begotten by one before it. Because, before his kind was felled, before that love of his was lost, there was a Fool, held prisoner by compromise. For you see, the Fool had a kind of his own, kept secret from the world until a single, unfortunate truth unraveled everything. But the Fool—clever even in his folly—struck a deal: he would surrender himself, and to keep the coven safe, he offered up his powers in exchange. Until the day his journey reached its inevitable end and he reached his promised funeral pyre, the hunted would help the hunters. In selfish exchange for the lives of his own, he would sell out the lives of others._

_And so one story begot the other._

“And there,” the Pierrot says, his melody falling into a slow, somber denouement, “is your precious truth.” 

Silence falls over the bed of the caravan. 

Eventually, the Wolfman breathes out a laugh, but it’s a pitiful, wounded thing lacking any substance. “You did say you’d heard all the stories.”

“I did.”

“But you never said you knew mine.”

“An omission and a lie aren’t necessarily one and the same,” he says. An echo of a conversation long passed.

The Wolfman swallows thickly, turning on his heel to pace if only to remind his feet he’s still grounded when everything else is shifting around him. “See, there you go again…,” he says, staggering over his warring thoughts. “What is this to you, really?”

“What is what?”

“If your story is as true as you say it is, then why would you come to me at all, looking for an answer you already knew?” he demands. 

“I told you that too,” the Pierrot coolly replies. “All I wanted was confirmation. An interesting story to pass the time. And now that I’ve gotten it, you’ve earned your exit, just like I promised. That’s all.” 

“Like hell that’s all!” He pivots back to the Pierrot, frustration burning hotly under his skin. Something about the turn of the conversation, so deliberate in its course, speaks of something more than a dismissal. Just as he’d been told, he follows the narrative thread. “You know, all this time I thought you were just hiding behind the mask, but that’s not it, is it?”

The Pierrot, unflinching where he holds himself against the bars, continues to speak, the record playing on, refusing any interruption. “Come now, don’t be a sore loser. You asked me for the truth, and I gave it to you. You wanted to know me, and now you do. Simple as that. Not my fault that you don’t like the results.”

The Wolfman shakes his head. “See—it’s your words too. You’ll look for any way out if you can get it—”

Still the Pierrot continues, “After all, I told you that truth is a liability. No matter how much you dislike it, you can’t simply will it to be false just because you hoped it would be different—”

“—So you keep hiding and hiding, keeping your distance, trying to scare me off and make me resent you now, all so I won’t dig too deep—”

“— because every good storyteller knows that fairy tales are made more palatable than reality by _design_ , Wolfman.”

“—Because if I did, then you just might have to admit that—”

“ _Enough_.” The Pierrot cuts him off with a harsh bark like a needle scratch across his record. He sweeps his wrist toward the open door, the ribbon trails fluttering after. “I’m _done_ with stories, Wolfman, and I certainly tire of yours. Now go and take your out while you can.”

Through the porthole window, the moonlight spills in, reflecting off of his impenetrable mask. It slides over the pristine gloss of Thalia’s rounded cheek, Melpomene’s sad brow, unmoved. And there, at the center of it, the dark hollow of their eyes remain, reflecting nothing at all. No truth,no lies. Practiced in its poise. Safe in its vacuity.

And just as the Pierrot had predicted in that spell-spun story of his, from the pit of his gut, the Wolfman’s hungry flames spill over and he ignites.

When he moves, it’s just a fraction too fast for the Pierrot to catch him. His hands graze the Wolfman’s forearms—a belated attempt to stop the act already in motion—but not quickly enough. A claw tears through finely-tied ribbon. The moonlight slips off from ceramic to skin. Porcelain breaks across the iron flooring, and the flurry of motion is brought to a stop.

Though dark as the night around them, there is nothing hollow about the Pierrot’s naked gaze as it stares defiantly up into the Wolfman’s own. Like night-water, it is fathomless yet full of something unknown. 

“Tell me again,” the Wolfman says through ragged breathing. His right hand lies heavy across the back of the Pierrot’s nape where it had landed in the scuffle, the other still lingering in the air where it had dropped its earlier prize. It itches for a place to land. He swallows down another breath, tasting spice on the air. Asks, “No more masks, no more empty words—why did you come to me all those weeks ago looking for an answer you already knew?” 

The Pierrot’s brow creases and his mouth parts prettily around his frustration. “You’re wasting precious time—”

But without the mask, it’s so easy to see the ripples in the night-water. The Wolfman grips one of the iron bars beside him with his free hand and leans further into their depths, until their foreheads nearly touch. A challenge, heavy and imploring. Clove and aniseed roll off the Pierrot in waves, this close, flooding his senses. He rolls in with them, muttering, “Tell me.”

As he leans his head to the side, dipping it down close to the hinge of the Pierrot’s jaw to follow the heady and dangerous scent of spice, the Pierrot shivers under his grasp. The tempo of his pulse turns staccato. “Your sentimentality really will be your downfall,” he says, weakly. Try as it might, without the mask to shield it, the waver in his voice can’t hide from senses heightened under the pale glow of the swollen gibbous moon. The off-beat rhythm sets his record just barely off kilter, angles his neck up just barely as well.

The Wolfman’s hand kneads into the knobs of his spine, across the curve of his nape as is fights against the impulse to reach deep for answers. “ _Kokichi,_ ” he murmurs, urging them to surface on their own, nosing along his jaw as spice sings through his senses like he was drunk with it.

And when a hand snakes up his chest, lingering unsure at the line of his breastbone, the Wolfman is quick to turn in towards the foreign sensation. 

This is different from the mask’s cold veneer. For all the Muses’ claim on tragedy and comedy both, the Wolfman is suddenly made aware of all that was lost in the space between their two extremes. The inwardly frustrated set of a jaw. The uneven splash of color across cheekbones. The vacillating dissidence held in the dip of a brow, at war with itself. The heavy, defiant fall of lids over lips pulled so tight that they quiver. 

There’s a story to be told in every subtle, living shift in the Pierrot’s expression. And when it shifts just right, the Wolfman finds it so easy to drown in the Pierrot’s night-water when—like a tide drawn in by the moon’s enticing fingers—it sweeps in so naturally to meet him. 

The line of the Pierrot's mouth is ink on paper. Each shift of it against his own like the gentle slip of a pen stroke as it arches across the page, each stuttered, shaky breath the quick cut of punctuation before the line starts anew. The kiss is a story in motion, written out in every hand palmed over skin and every finger swept across rippling gooseflesh. He lets the narrative carry him just as he fights to carry it along himself, wrestling control and having it wrestled from himself in return.

And as he drowns in the Pierrot’s night-water and the earthy draft of spice, long forgotten words bubble up through the haze of his clouded thoughts. 

_Beware of silver_ , he’d been told from the moment he could put meaning to the words and seemingly every moment of his life thereon after. _Be they bullets, knives, or even coin, you must always keep a vigil eye._

And keep one he had tried. From the day he’d heard the words to the day their speakers had met their end to it themselves, he’d been so very careful. It was only too bad, he realizes now, that they’d never warned him of the most dangerous weapon of all—a clever, silver tongue. 

Because night after night, the Pierrot had poured his silvered lies down his throat like poison, and fool that he is, he had drunk them down, regardless. 

Even as the poison sings through him, he finds he doesn’t mind the bite.

“I’m not leaving here unless you’re with me,” he growls, nose buried deep into the soft, pale line of the Pierrot’s shoulder as they sink down the bars to the floor. A fierceness in him rises to the surface, and he struggles to hold back the bit of claws that long to sink into the Pierrot’s skin if only to keep him from fading away entirely. As the Pierrot curves up against the sharp cut of his mouth, his own blunted nails searching for purchase across his back, the Wolfman mutters into the skin, “There a way to end this for both of us, I know it. I’ll make _sure_ of it.”

The Pierrot laughs, and it’s a pretty, gasping thing that he can almost taste beneath the skin of his arched throat. Both the bitterness of its doubt and the faint sweetness of its yearning. Hungrily swallowing it down, he thinks maybe he’s not the only one grown sentimental over time. 

And when he wakes a spent, disheveled mess to a locked cage door and a strange sachet of clove and aniseed tucked into the palm of his hand, he can’t say he’s surprised. For all that he’d tried to hard to weave his own narrative into the tale, the night’s end had been a foregone conclusion from the moment he’d let sleep overtake him and the Pierrot out of his sight.

At the other side of the cage, the splintered remains of the mask cast the sunlight across the floor in broken fractals. When he tips his gaze to follow the light out the porthole window, it’s to the sight of a towering cathedral spire peering over the horizon and the long, winding road ahead, bound for its doorstep. Long, yes, but not long enough.

He draws the sachet to his nose and breathes in, deep and angry. At least then, he can blame the sting at the back of his eyes on the sharp bite of the spice. 

— ❖ 5  ❖ —

After the Pierrot’s clear, stinging rejection, the Wolfman is fully prepared for a sleepless night filled with the lonely ache of solitude and the clawing fear of an execution, waiting just around the bend for him. He curls into the cold, familiar comfort of the iron bars of the cage and pillows his head into the curve of his arms. This was how it was meant to be. This is returning to square one, when he had found a sad but understanding peace in accepting a lonely, solitary end. 

So he is surprised when, miraculously, his ears prick up at the sound of a lock sliding out of place. He raises his chin from the fold of his arms across his knees and looks to the unexpected sound.

The moonlight spills in through the open caravan door, framing the Pierrot’s form from behind. It almost seems too good to be true. Perhaps this is the dream he had expected the Pierrot to be the first night they’d met. Perhaps—just as he’d expected then—the specter will fade out into nothing, and it will all have been simply the haze of a dream.

But the Pierrot remains, free of the mask and as solid and stalwart as the moon hanging behind him. 

Carefully, he calls out, “Kokichi?”

As if woken from a brief stupor, the Pierrot jolts at his name. After a brief pause, he wordlessly crosses to the door of the cage, slipping the familiar ring of keys out from his pocket and sorting through them. As he wordlessly watches on, the Wolfman desperately tries not to trace the marks across the boy’s pale neck, the faint bruising of his mouth—traitorous evidence of a now-pathetic longing, an unsatisfied hunger. He isn’t successful. He swallows down his shame and turns his eyes to the gently swaying keys instead. 

Eventually the Pierrot’s searching fingers arrive at the right one, and under his fingers the lock falls open easily, remembering the way it had been coaxed into it the night before. He lets the door swing open, but instead of walking in, he turns around and heads back the way he’d come. 

He doesn’t leave, though. In the open caravan doorway, he takes a seat, letting his legs dangle over the side. There’s space enough beside him for another body to fit in next to him. It seems a pointed gesture.

The Wolfman narrows his eyes, but pushes himself to standing and crosses towards the open cage door all the same.

It’s odd how the smallest things can seem so momentous in the right framing. He shouldn’t hesitate as he approaches the lip of the cage, reaching a hand out for the door’s open invitation, but he does. Passing first his wrist, then the length of his arm, and finally the whole of his self through its open door shouldn’t feel so significant, but it does. The cage had always offered him room to stand, to sleep, to pace in his agitation, but now standing outside of it he feels as though he’d just grown three times his own size. The space beyond it’s open bars feels ever-expanding, and he is dwarfed by the potential of it all. A breath shudders out of him, but then he leaves it behind within the cage and moves on.

He slips in easily beside the Pierrot as he sits. Their shoulders press together in the narrow space, leeching warmth between them. Beside him, the Pierrot inhales deeply, then turns his curious gaze down to the seam of the Wolfman’s trouser pocket. The Wolfman stubbornly holds his tongue as the Pierrot breathes out a small laugh. “So you kept it.”

The Wolfman shoves his hand into his pocket, cramming the sachet and the telling scent of clove and aniseed further into it. He itches under the knowing implication of the Pierrot’s tone. “I still don’t know what _it_ is.”

“Witch secrets,” the Pierrot replies, drawing a demure finger up to his bruised lip and only letting it drop once with a short laugh once the Wolfman’s eyes skirt down and away from it.

Beneath the three overhanging steps, the dirt path flows like a river current. The carriage rocks like a boat floating atop it. The Wolfman watches it carefully. It would be so easy to just step down and bid goodbye to this godforsaken prison of theirs, he thinks. How does the Pierrot resist the tempting pull of its current?

He decides to ask, in a way. The Pierrot’s strangely placid mood tonight might favor him an answer. “What you said, the other night. Is there really no way for you to leave here?”

The Pierrot hums, folding his chin into his hands. “A troupe like this knows the creatures they hunt well enough to figure out how to use them over time, you know. You hunt enough witches and you’re bound to learn how they tick.”

“And you’re not the first witch they’ve used,” the Wolfman infers. 

“Takes a witch to snare one, and I proved to be an easy catch, it turns out.” The Pierrot gives an unaffected shrug. “You asked me once what cage kept me here. Well, there you have it.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

He throws a sidelong glance at the Wolfman, then straightens up off his hunched position over his knees. His right hand snakes down into the hidden seam of his pocket, and with no preamble at all, he produces the coveted item within. 

The Wolfman frowns as he is shown not a locket, but a pocket watch. 

The Pierrot lets out a short laugh as his obvious confusion. “It was a good guess on your part, but I’m far too practiced a liar to be outwitted so easily.” He thumbs the top of the winding stem, causing the latch to snap undone and the clamshell casing to fold open. Delicate, obviously-handmade carvings curve across every inch of the casing, but the centermost ring is an empty hole where a timepiece should sit, but noticeably doesn’t. “In your defense, though, I suppose a pocket watch without the watch is not far off from a locket in the end.” 

The Wolfman tilts his head down to eye the markings snaking across the inner folds and the hollow O of its centerpiece. “What is it?” he asks.

The Pierrot turns the case over in his hands, letting the light bounce off of it and cast a warm golden glow across his fingers. “Every witch needs magic, and all magic needs a focus,” he murmurs. “Not hard to guess that the poor fool before me sold mine out as part of his own Faustian bargain.”

“They stole your magic.”

“Oh, not all of it. I’m working at just enough power to help them with the occasional hunt, enough to whip up a convenient charm or two.” It’s quick, but the Wolfman catches his gaze dart down to Wolfman’s pocket, then back to the watch case. “All the while they have a convenient breadcrumb trail back to me, should I ever try to leave.” 

It’s not hard to infer what he means by that. “You wouldn’t have to go home, if that’s what you’re so scared of,” the Wolfman murmurs. “You could just run.” 

The Pierrot smiles, a sad, knowing little thing. “Come now. Ask yourself—were that pack of yours still alive, how long do you think you could keep yourself away?”

The Wolfman dips his gaze aside, feeling too exposed under the Pierrot’s surgical precision. 

The Pierrot laughs and the empty watchcase snaps shut to punctuate it. “So there’s my poor, pitiful tale. Once we reach the capital, I’ll burn at the pyre and tucked away in my pocket, this will burn with me. If the last fool afforded me one charity, it was telling them all they needed was the timepiece to keep me in check.”

“So when you said it was insurance…”

The Pierrot’s lips curve up devilishly. “Even if they decide to go back on their word, it won’t do them any good. My magic, and everything that ties me to it, dies with me.”

Something inside the Wolfman aches to hear that. And perhaps it’s something in the Pierrot’s magic that causes him to turn to peer over at him as though he’d sensed it, smile falling into something more subdued, more somber. “Oh please,” he chides, “spare me the sad puppy dog eyes. I have done far too much to ever deserve your pity.”

“You’ve been trying to give me a way out,” the Wolfman counters.

The Pierrot huffs, “One that, infuriatingly, you _continue_ to refuse to take. _Honestly,_ what’s a poor boy to do?”

“I…,” the Wolfman bites his tongue, turning back to the path snaking out ahead of them. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“What, still hung up on that happy ending of yours?” 

His sad, rueful smile, all its intricate detail and emotion exposed in the moonlight, is so pitiful that the Wolfman can’t help but lean in to cover it with his own. 

The Pierrot accepts the kiss willingly, angling in to meet him, and that too strikes a sudden pang of pity in him. Because it’s so different than the act he’d played all this time. Because it exposes him so much more than even the loss of the mask had. Even with their absence, he tastes both Thalia and Melpomene on his lips—comedy and tragedy. The clashing contradiction of a desire for more and a quiet acceptance to never have it.

He desperately cups one hand against the Pierrot’s neck, places the other palm to his chest just to feel the living heartbeat underneath. Warmth bleeds through the costume, so alive now but stinging of _not for long_. And oh does he ache with it, because to accept the Pierrot’s resignation is to accept his own failure, and something in that hurts more than any injury the Wolfman can ever remember receiving. 

He screws his eyes shut against that misery and wills down the retaliatory anger that sharpens his nails into claws as though it were something physical he could tear into. They catch on the costume fabric as he kneads uselessly, as though searching for an anchor against the acute sensation of drowning. The Pierrot’s breath hitches, but the Wolfman swallows it down desperately to keep the moment unbroken. He wants it to last. He _needs_ it to.

And he is so lost in the kiss and his thoughts both that he doesn’t register the Pierrot sliding careful hands up his wrist. He’s so focused on desperately holding onto every detail of the kiss that it takes him a second longer than it should to feel them tug, to hear the Pierrot’s pained hiss of breath against his mouth, to recognize the wet warmth under his claws or the sting of iron in the air. 

He jerks back from the Pierrot. As he does, he hears his claws tear out from skin with a sickening wet sound. The Pierrot’s fingers remain as firm points digging into his wrist, refusing to let go, but his mouth is a wobbly, satisfied smile as the Wolfman stares at him in abject horror. 

“ _Shit,_ Kokichi—!”

Blood seeps out of the slash marks across his chest, deep gashes in the skin that turn the deep violet hues of his jacket close to black, but the Pierrot keeps his grip iron-tight on his wrist. “Sorry,” he says, teeth grit in pain but still fit into the shape of a smile, “but an ultimatum seemed like the only way to get the ball rolling.”

The Wolfman presses his free hand to the worst of the wound, wincing at the feeling of torn flesh and blood slick under his fingers, “Wh–… what are you _talking_ about?” 

The Pierrot releases one of his hands, reaching down into his pocket where it pulls out the ring of keys. They jingle agitatedly against each other as he shakily brings them up and presses them into the Wolfman’s blood-stained fingers. Breathing raggedly, he says, “Here’s a story that I think the crowds would like—it’s about a poor, naïve Fool and the savage, desperate Wolfman that tricked him to his demise.”

Blood continues to ooze through the gaps of the Wolfman’s fingers no matter how hard he applies pressure to it. “Shut _up_ ,” he hisses, trying to wrench his other hand out of the Pierrot’s grasp.

But the Pierrot holds tight. He tilts his head just right so that the Wolfman can’t look away from the fathomless depths of his night-water eyes. The phonograph record creeps in. “ _Once upon a time, there was a Fool. And this Fool was so very lonely and so very stupid, so he sought out conversation with one of the caged beasts of the circus. There was nothing to fear, he thought, for the beast was held in the cage, and he could remain safely outside his dangerous grasp_.” 

The Wolfman pulls desperately at his wrist again. “C’mon, let go—!”

“ _So night after night he went to the Wolfman, and with every night that poor veneer of safety slipped away as he let his guard further and further down._ ”

“You need help, _please_ —”

“ _Until one night the Wolfman coaxed him to do the unthinkable—with hungry teeth fit around a tender smile, he invited the Fool to open the door._ The better to see you with, my dear, _isn’t that how the old tale goes?_ ”

“ _Kokichi!_ ”

“ _And so he took a chance, and with it, invited the Wolfman to take his own. Under the light of the nearly-full moon he assailed the poor, naïve Fool with sharp, bloodthirsty claws_.” He swallows thickly, but still refuses to bend. Over the ring of keys pressed between their palms, he laces their fingers together, squeezing. “ _Then he stole the keys and ran off into the night, never to be seen again_.”

The Wolfman squeezes his hand back, pressing their interlocked knuckles to the pained line of his mouth. “I’m not going to leave you here,” he pleads against them.

The Pierrot laughs wetly as the record fades out. “Sorry, but the longer you take to leave, the longer I take to set my little performance in motion. And the longer I wait on that, the longer it will take for help to get to me. It’s your choice, Wolfman, what will it be?”

The Wolfman can’t hold back a frustrated rumble of a growl. “I told you, that’s not my name…”

The Pierrot’s smile is Thalia’s fondness, Melpomene’s lament. “ _Kaito,_ ” he murmurs. The name sounds so nice on his lips, even when it’s said so sadly. “This is your last chance, you know it. Not all fairy tales are meant to have happy endings.”

“But I _wanted_ it to,” the Wolfman mutters miserably against the Pierrot’s knuckles.

And so quietly that the breath of it could almost be mistaken for the wind, the Pierrot replies, “I know. I think I did too.”

Then his grip goes slack. His fingers slide out of the Wolfman’s grip, leaving the ring of keys to fall around his wrist. The other hand finally releases him, snaking across his hip and up his side where it joins the other in the center of his chest. They lay flat against him, right across the living beat of his heart just as the Wolfman’s own had his not long before.

And then they push. Vertigo rushes in as the Wolfman falls, tumbling down off the doorway’s ledge—down, down, down to the path below. 

He spills across the ground, rocks biting into his side viciously. Dirt mixes together with the still-warm blood smeared across his fingers, a sickening slurry across his own now scraped up palms. The momentum eventually slows him to a stop, and when he manages to lift his bruised body up on one elbow, it’s just in time to watch the final carriage of the caravan—his prison for so many long, terrible nights—climb over the top of a hill ahead. 

And there, leaned up weakly against the doorframe and perched on the topmost step, is the Pierrot. The moonlight catches the wide, bloodied cut of his smile, so pristine and artificial, for all but a second before it winks out over the crest of the hill and out of sight. 

Gritting his teeth, the Wolfman struggles to stand, but he crumples under sharp, bruising pain and falls to his side. 

Over the sound of his own hiss of pain, a latch snap sounds out over the otherwise silent night. 

Snarling against a wince, the Wolfman rolls onto his back. He fits a hand over his side and is surprised to feel a lump in the fabric that wasn’t there before. The ring of keys around his wrist jingles as he reaches into the pocket seam.

Next to the sachet of clove and aniseed, the empty watchcase slides snugly in his palm, the Pierrot’s warmth slowly seeping out of it. 

The moon, ever his faithful companion, washes over him. Her presence is a consolation, but also a defeat. He throws an arm over his eyes and, wolf that he is, howls up towards her.

It’s a sad, broken thing. 

A fitting finale.

❖

The moon is full on the evening the Pierrot is to die. 

He could almost laugh at the pitiful sentiment it sparks in him. Sentiment, though, is a thing meant for the living, not something for dead men to carry with them to their graves. So he lets it seep out of him as he watches the color of the sky shift in shades behind the harvest moon’s amber glow.

All in all, he appreciates that at least one member of his audience will be completely silent in her judgement of him.

When the rattle of keys sounds somewhere down the hallway, his fingers itch for a trinket no longer his, but he holds them steady in the fold of his lap. His poise is a practiced thing, as is the placid smile he has painted so pristinely across his face. When his executioner comes for him, flinching—just barely—at the sight of his hollow, haunting composure, he considers it one final victory. 

Tonight, the fairy tale will end. It was always fated to be a sad, karmic thing, he reasons. One bound to leave its future audiences with a bittersweet taste in their mouths, but these stories have a purpose to them too. Let it act as a warning to all the fools who will follow after him—and there will be more of them to come. Proud things that think themselves too clever to ever let themselves be victims. He would know. 

So yes, there will always be more fools of his ilk who let egos and sentimentality get the best of them, but at least they will no longer be able to use the excuse that no one told them so. There’s bitter satisfaction in that, and he would say he’s happy to die with that thought as a last comfort. 

The binding tied across his wrists chafes against the years-old burn mark. When he cocks his head over his shoulder to chide the executioner for the ill treatment, the man only binds them tighter. _Oh well_ , the Pierrot thinks, and flexes his fingers just to feel the blood run sluggish and the pins and needles roll in. 

As his warden hoists him up by the bindings and shoves him towards the door, he skips a step ahead and turns on his heel to offer a short, final gesture to the slowly rising moon where it gazes down through the prison cell’s small window. A proper stand-in for the audience the sweeping performance is truly meant for. The wound across his stomach gnashes its teeth at him as he bends at the waist, but he hides the pain in a demure smile. They’ll meet outside soon enough—the rhythmic sound of a woodcutter’s axe in the distance promises that—but he’d like to bow-out on his own terms, one last time. 

But the executioner catches up and shoves him forward once more. The curtain falls. _Oh well_. The Pierrot straightens with a wince, then prepares for one last performance. 

The hallway is dark, devoid of guards, all the other cells eerily empty. He wonders just how often they host these sorts of functions for them to be so empty. He wonders just how many prideful fools preceded him, entertaining the masses with their pitiful swan songs. Will his final act be a spectacle for the ages, or just another footnote in a long list of similar tragedies? 

Oh, he wonders. 

That would be the greatest pity of all, he thinks as the executioner leads him ever onward. To have his story’s end be unremarkable. Because for all that duty bound him to a predetermined ending, he at least would like it to be memorable.

Maybe someone will remember him, or maybe they won’t. Either way, he won’t be around to know, so what will it matter? _Oh well_.

The hall curves and, lost in his thoughts, he almost trips on something lying across the floor, hidden in the shadows of another intersecting hallway. He dips his eyes down to see it as the executioner pushes him steadily forward, and had they been moving any faster and he might not have recognized the object for what it was. But recognize it he does.

A gauntleted arm, lying limp across the ground.

His executioner, focused on the simple task at hand, doesn’t seem to notice, but the Pierrot certainly does. As does he notice the next oddity, tucked into the shaded corner of one of the conspicuously empty cells. He notices the jagged tears wrenched down the front of the felled guard’s gambeson. Four of them in perfectly parallel lines, shoulder to hip. He feels the phantom echo of them across his own chest. Iron lies heavy on the air.

He wonders if, perhaps, the halls and cells were so conspicuously empty not by design, but because of circumstance, unwritten into the story.

Behind him, the executioner grunts. He hears something slump to the ground, but a presence remains at his back. It presses him steadily onwards.

At first he flinches out of habit as warmth slides over the crossed line of his wrists. But the slide of fingers across skin carefully draws his own folded fingers apart, tucking something cool and metallic into them. He feels the familiar latch of the watch casing, the cool, snaking weight of its fob. Above all else, he hears the steady ticking of the timepiece, like a pulse, tucked back into its rightful place. The warmth of familiar magic coils itself back into his veins.

Then he feels breath at his nape, smells clove and aniseed wash over him as nails too sharp to be wholly human gently pull apart the cross point of his bindings. “Say, Witch?” a voice asks him in a tone that, while hushed, rumbles with a growl that is both dangerous and wanting. “I’ve got a question for you.”

The Pierrot shivers as the humid warmth of the words tucks itself into the whorls of his ear, nestles into his core. “I’m hankering for a good story, and I hear you’re quite the storyteller, ” it continues, laying the warm weight of a hand at the line of his shoulders, then letting it smooth down to the small of his back. “Think you can give me one?”

The harvest moon’s amber glow filters in defiantly from each prison cell window they pass. Her full-bodied smile seems an encouraging thing as the warm pressure at his back leads him pointedly away from the faint sounds of unrest filtering in from the direction of the town square. They turn away, and she winks out of view.

The hallway he is led down is dark as spilt ink. As they slip into it—like a stain consuming a page from the bottom up—the Pierrot feels the ending he had predicted for so many weeks be lost to the spill.

“Oh,” he purrs around a grin. It is a dangerous and wanting thing of its own, “do I have a tale for you.”

❖

_Then Lina and Fundevogel went home together, and were heartily delighted._

_And if they have not died, they are living still._

_—Fundevogel,_ The Brothers Grimm 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, Happy 2020 to the handful of V3 oumota fans still out there! You are all so valid, and know that I love and appreciate you dearly.


End file.
